GREAT BUSTARD. 23 



books, that bustards were taken by dogs. One eye- 

 witness, in Suffolk, speaks to a bird having run for 

 about twenty yards (a very short distance for a course), 

 pursued by a greyhound, which nearly succeeded in 

 catching it, but this, he stated, was an accidental 

 circumstance, and all other testimony is to the fact that 

 a bustard could rise "as light as a lark."* The capture 

 recorded by Mr. Lubbock (" Fauna of Norfolk," p. 41) 

 of a bird at Sprowston, to be hereafter mentioned, is 

 clearly not to the point, since " the greyhounds came 

 suddenly through a gate close to it, and seized it before 

 able to take wing," so that there was probably no course 

 at all. If ever the coursing of bustards by greyhounds 

 was practiced in any part of England, it could only have 

 been when the birds were very young, or, being old, had 

 moulted out their quill feathers. f I may here add, how- 



* A male bird observed on two occasions by Messrs. Sheppard 

 and Whitear, " suffered itself to be approached to about the distance 

 of a hundred yards, then walked deliberately a few paces and took 

 wing, without Hie least difficulty" The often quoted lines, also, 

 from the " Polyolbion " 



" The big-boan'd bustard then, whose body beares that size, 



That he against the wind must runne, ere he can rise." 

 only show that Drayton was not so good an observer of nature as 

 he was poet, for the habit mentioned is common to a very large 

 number of birds, as every snipe-shooter knows. In the " Illustrated 

 London News," No. 733, for December 8th, 1855, a contributor 

 spoke of the days when English coursers 



" Gaily slipped their greyhounds at the bustards in the fens." 

 But the editor of that newspaper preserved a very discreet silence 

 when requested to supply the authority whence the " quotation" 

 was made. 



f Naumann (Yog. Deutschl., vii., pp. 45, 46) suggests a prob- 

 able origin for the story, which he calls " absurd," in the fact that 

 bustards are occasionally incapacitated for flight by having their 

 wing coverts frozen, to which several authorities bear wit- 

 ness ; but such an event must be rare in any country, and 



